“Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.”

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

The use of self-control is like the use of brakes on the train. It is useful when you find yourself in the wrong direction but merely harmful when the direction is right.

It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won’t go.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected.

Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.

The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about other things, or, if it is night, about nothing at all.

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.

Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.

In all affairs, it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.

And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.

The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

If I’m reborn, let my soul find yours again, so our missing pieces can connect and we can become whole.

We’re the mirror of the cosmos, where stars collapse, born, and fade in unison.

A woman of integrity I swallow stones I used to throw grace was daunting until I surrendered then everything changed a woman was made.

They saw her beaten and broken I saw the birth of a warrior.

After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.

Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die.

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth — look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.

She was living with a dead hope like a mother patting her still born.